This week home education looks like...

Sarah, over at Carried Family has written a fantastic post on what a week of unschooling looks like for her family.  Lovely to read as a home educator myself, who is often plague with worries of "am I doing enough, is Rye getting an education, should I "do" more with him?".
The obvious step is to record my own week with Rye, and I unashamedly admit I'm including Thursday and Friday because they were days that included very obvious learning, and were just such brilliant days, that I want to record them now.  So, our week will run from Thursday to Thursday.

Thursday:
Rye was up early.
Crashing cars and making up songs about it.
Helped pack for our afternoon at the beach with friends from the Home Ed group.
Asking what plants are as we walk along the side of the cliff to the beach.
Making huge sand mountains.
Playing in the sea, testing nerves and going deeper than ever before.
Looking at a Jelly fish that a friend found.  And shell hunting.

Initial upset and sulks that I allowed one of the boys to pull my trolley.  Rye felt it was his job; warned him not to snatch the trolley back - and suddenly fantastic cooperation happened.  The boys agreed Rye could pull the trolley once at the top of the cliff steps - and they cooperated brilliantly to carry the trolley up the cliff steps.  Very impressed.
Rye went to Street Dance class.
Once home tidied through the downstairs.
Went to bed and listened to a story cd.








Friday
Childminding day.  Mindee arrived at 8:30am.
Free silly, giggly play in the lounge.
Dancing to music on the radio.
Water play in the paddling pool, and lots of the float or sink experiments.
Running and jumping in to make big splashes.
Bubble machine on, discovered the bubbles "stick" to them when they are wet.

Friends arrive and I refill a now rather empty pool.
Rye is a little bossy - seeing where he can exert himself.
Lots of sand/trampoline and pool play - Rye mostly in pool playing with cars and planes.
Clay modelling - Rye makes a realistic looking racing car.
Kids gravitate indoors, and play boardgames:  sum swamp, trianomoes, snakes and ladders, quirkle.  All the kids have a go at sum swamp, working out the sums, working out even and odd numbers etc.  Friends leave at tea time.
Rye goes back outside and makes more clay models.
Listens to a story cd.

Saturday
Enjoyed morning cuddles.
Another childminding day, well morning, this time.
Swamp Sum with mindee - helps her with working out the sums etc.
Rye exhibits good humour when he looses the game, or when mindee gets snarky at him trying to help her.
Football club.
Visit friends, and plays with his best friend.
Pop into town for pimsoles for Rye's dance show.
Rye tries samples from the Italian Olive cart (just the biscuits and Italian quiche).
Plays swamp sum on his own.
Watches car racing on You Tube, and kiddy programmes on Netflix.
Plays Top Gear stunt game.
 
Sunday:

Rehearsals - Rye really enjoys it.
Show in the later afternoon - Rye performs in the show with the rest of the kids from his classes.  Sooooo proud of him!

Monday

Morning snuggles in bed, with the fan on.
Talked about why we sweat and the purpose of perspiration.
Dentist for me, so Rye stayed with a friend, playing and helping to put together jigsaw puzzles.
 Later when the kids were back, played with his best friend and watched some Dr Who.
Helped tidy up in prep for my crochet course this evening.
Watched Top Gear.
Play Top Gear stunt game.
1/2 hr of Reading Eggs.


Tuesday
Imaginative play with zoobs and cars.
Sum Swamp board game
building with quirkle tiles and knocking them down with the car.
Bouncing on trampoline.
Lots of talk about the weather, storms, looking at lightening bolts online.
Practicing letters on the blackboard.
Drawing.
Song and Dance Class.
Swimming Lesson - impressed his instructor with his new confidence in the water and swimming.  Just need him to be confident swimming on his back and he will go up another level.
Audio story.

Wednesday:
Sing and imaginative play with cars and zoobs on the tree house.
Sum Swamp board game.
Looking at books.
Playing in the sandpit with the cars.
Practising letters on the black board.
Taking photos and videos with his camera, and then editing the photos.
Horse riding lesson.
Working out cost of cars/buses he liked in the post office shop.
Making his own lunch (crackers with butter - I added cucumber, carrot and fruit)
Listening to audio story.





Water play at the fountain at the harbour for over 2 hours, including a water fight with me.

The lights looked so pretty when they finally came on at 9pm.















Thursday:
Cuddles
Imaginative play with zoobs, cars, big wooden jcb and play silks.
bouncing on the trampoline.
Writing numbers on the blackboard
Sum Swamp.
Junior Scrabble
Watching kiddy programmes on netflix.
Reading Eggs
Singing and dancing to the radio.
Experimenting with materials for boat making - tried paper, card and beeswax modelling clay.  Told me he really needed wood to make a boat that floated or simply didn't disintegrate once wet.

So there we have it.
The most glaring thing to me is how similar the days are, and how many resources are not being used.   There is a lot of learning through fun and games going on, yet I've noticed many of the resources available to Rye are not being utilised, and I've found myself feeling somewhat frustrated at the level of destructive play - lots of crashing things together and pounding them on the floor... watching him I honestly think it's because he needs more stimulus and plain old inspiration to fire the old imagination in new directions, and I need to think of some creative ways he can expend some of that destructive drive without ruining toys.

Domestic chores feature a lot in our day, small home means constant tidying to ensure space for us both, there's not a lot of fun chores though, cooking together has been fairly non existent.   Ok I'm juicing/raw eating again, no reason I can't help him to make his own meals.  Washing up, which he loves - again I've been doing it, or just letting pots build up enough to fill the dishwasher.

I think we both need a bit of a shake up... and potentially there's a huge one coming.  In 10 sleeps Rye and I visit Liverpool and seriously consider joining Rose Howey.  It's a big step, one we are both excited about, I could waffle on excitedly; there's really no point until we've been to visit and know one way or t'other.   And until then, we have 9 anticipation filled days to wait - good time to give us both a bit of a shake up and explore some of those unused resources on the shelves!